TEXTS AND PRETEXTS

* What a shade beneath her nose !

Snuff-taking, I suppose,5

Adds the cousin, while John's corns ail.

Or else there's no wife in the case,

But the portrait's Queen of the place,

Alone 'mid the other spoils

Of youth—masks, gloves and foils,

And pipe-sticks, rose, cherry-tree, jasmine,

And the long whip, the tandem-lasher,

And the cast of a fist (c not alas mine,

But my master's, the Tipton Slasher '),

And the cards where pistol-balls mark ace,

And a satin shoe used for cigar-case,

And the chamois horns (c shot in the Chablais '),

And prints—Rarey drumming on Cruiser,

And Savers, our champion, the bruiser,

And the little edition of Rabelais :

Where a friend, with both hands in his pockets,

May saunter up close to examine it,

And remark a good deal of Jane Lamb in it,

i But the eyes are half out of their sockets :

That hair's not so bad, where the gloss is,

But they've made the girl's nose a proboscis :

Jane Lamb, that we danced with at Vichy !

What, isn't she Jane ? Then, who is she ? '

All that I own is a print,
An etching, a mezzotint;
*Tis a study, a fancy, a fiction,
Yet a fact (take my conviction)
Because it has more than a hint
Of a certain face, I never
Saw elsewhere touch or trace of
In women I've seen the face of:
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